Working From Home

sarahell otm. part of the challenge is my salary is high for what I'm doing now. my current salary has nothing to do w/ what I'm doing now, but is mostly what it is because of being here 18 years and earning top tier annual reviews almost every year of it, with corresponding pay bumps. I'm at the very top of the pay band for my current job, so if I wanted to do THIS work elsewhere (I don't, tbh), I'd get significantly less.

However, I have thought about doing my OLD job (implementations) at other companies before. 2017 was a rather humbling experience. I was angry and ready to leave altogether, I had told my boss I was done, and I paid an agency and also put my resumes on every site, touting my experience. I was expecting to get a huge offer and peace the fuck out with my middle fingers out.

The agency was useless and found me nothing. From my posted resumes, I did get responses - but comical ones. I was an implementation requirements analyst at the time, and I got an offer to do the same thing at a competitor. for $14/hour. less than half my salary, in fact, only $2/hour more than what they paid entry level customer care agents at my company.

in the end, I had to move for my mental health - I wound up taking a $6k paycut to move to the department I'm in now. I might just test the waters a little because my best friend's mother used to work at our main competitor and could put in a good word for me there (I didn't know her back in 2017).

it feels ridiculous that I am having financial issues given how good my salary is but I got heavily in debt, somewhat to help the folks out, somewhat due to poor decision making between 2020-this year, some due to gambling addiction resulting in a big loss last year. but the debt relief program should help me get out of it. and there's always bankruptcy if things got worse (wouldn't be a Neanderthal if I didn't file for bankruptcy, it's a thing we do)

tbh I wish someone would just pay me to ride around in a van with Mercyful Fate all day

(also don't get it twisted, I don't make six figures or anything...lol...i wish)

Feeling old fashioned here for only ever applying on advertised vacancies! Different markets and sectors but something I'll keep in mind.

Glad your rejection wasn't personal

Accepted the better of the two job offers from yesterday. For some reason, even though it's WFH, I have to take a piss test. It seems like a formality, though — I start work on Monday but I have till Wednesday to take the test. I guess if it came back positive for crack and heroin, they'd fire me?

just don’t use those drugs anytime after the weekend

perhaps a straight-edge ILXor can fedex you some clean piss?

Won't be me, however

I am basically straight edge, so it's not a concern. What's more worrisome is the possibility that I may lapse into a coma watching the mandatory videos about data security and HIPAA.

maybe you can review them for your blog or some other publication

those videos are so fucking tiresome

lol we just had a slew of those annual videos this year, fuckin hate em.

what's funny is when you go through these videos, then see leaders clearly violating data privacy rules mere weeks later and they say 'who cares' when you point it out

I have to do CPE for my license, so I generally have to watch the equivalent of 10 - 15 hours of these each year ... (I generally will have them on in the background while I have coffee and play solitaire or something).

From the beginning of covid lol:

Dear Andrew *******,

You have 1 assignment that is 1130 days overdue.

You must complete the following assignment(s):

- Executive Series: Securely Working From Home with Quiz

every 'lunch break' I've had this entire week has been filled up with doing the tasks my manager gave me while he knew I was also training people, and also finding out what's going on w/ dad at the hospital.

there needs to be a contraption that just clings food at high speed into your mouth and down your throat in one fluid motion

*Flings

that's why that soylent stuff exists?

https://huel.com/

not wfh for first time since the world ended and what a palaver. have to prepare and take (cold) food with me to eat at my desk. public transport. 40 minute commute, both ways. no TV / radio on in the background. shared toilets.

it is only a one day deal and i do get to see a dalek, but hey, why did we ever do this?

going out and getting lunch was the best part of office working.

prêt threepiece costs a tenner now

I've been in my current job for two years now (went back to a company I worked at for ages pre-pandemic) and I have been to the office once and I've never met any of my actual colleagues and it....sucks?

Now you have something to look forward to!

the best two days of my week are getting in and meeting my team and colleagues in person and the second best three days of my week are staying home and getting some work done

I go in to the office about once a month, for two days. Meeting people = classic. Last time I had the mythical experience beloved of managers and anti WFHers where a chance meeting in person cleared up a problem that had been bugging me for days. Being almost alone in a large office because everyone is WFH that day, and squinting at a small laptop screen = dud.

I'm technically in the office five days a week but I usually WFH about 2-3 days a month and I love those few days and will likely ask for one perm WFH day a week soon but I wouldn't want more than that. It's absolutely a personal thing but I do find it a ton easier to get stuff done at work and I actually like the getting dressed up and having to interact with colleagues part.

Being almost alone in a large office because everyone is WFH that day

see i love this

Friday is my favorite day in the office.

My supervisor at my new job has mentioned the idea of flying me in for a day to "meet the team". I said "Sure, fine, sounds good" as my brain melted and ran out my ears. I haven't worked in an office since May 2016, except for literally three days in March 2020 (I got a new job and three days later we were in pandemic lockdown). I have no interest in glad-handing these people; we get along just fine on Zoom and email.

my boss did a pretty smart thing early in the pandemic which was to schedule a weekly team hangout each thursday afternoon on Zoom, where we do talk some work stuff but we also talk about current events or the submarine or whatever, drink a couple beers.. now we've hired a couple remote team members and they'll join in so there's some semblance of office/water cooler banter once a week

we tried this but everyone hated it

Ha, I think some people hate it as they never show up, which is fine. But it definitely is a time zone thing that leans West Coast and our employee in Atlanta almost never joins in

talking to boss's boss over lunch and he lives an hour's drive away and is therefore fine with us all wfh.

was nice to see, hear from people not in my immediate team for the first time in years. also got out early and had a useful trip to fopp so...

(it also helps that the dept has been over-delivering despite being under-staffed and is key for the company's strategy)

They did the zoom hangout thing at my old place and nobody came lol. I really hate video calls. Much rather just be in person. By the end of the pandemic I just couldn’t handle them anymore.

the zoom hangout thing, doesn't only one person get to speak at once? and isn't it usually the same few people?

I feel like it's better if you treat it like a party where participants can wander in and out so you only have a certain number of people overlapping

My workplace (irl) has a "coffee chat" open meeting once a week where you can show up if you like and socialize, and we noticed the party rule applies: If there's below a certain threshold you can have one conversation going, but if you break that threshold people naturally divide into subgroups and have multiple conversations going, bounce between groups, etc.

If you're doing a shared activity and it's less of a conversation space and more of a game or task, the little injections of conversation pick up a little

it is only a one day deal and i do get to see a dalek, but hey, why did we ever do this?

― koogs

working from home has made me realize how stupid and pointless my job is and how much i hate it

i liked my co-workers and i genuinely enjoyed spending time with them

also apparently the only way i can get people to spend time with me is if they're literally required to do so. so i'm That Person in the office.

decided to go out and work late afternoon because today is a SLOW day adn I'm just observing classes and getting tired of being inside house. also nobody had messaged me like....at all, all day.

bring my laptop out to a restaurant and work and then all of the questions come in, but nbd because I was multitasking.

then one of them finally asks me to actually answer a question in the training and I'm trying to do so by typing and they weren't reading it so I eventually just unmuted with hip hop playing loudly in the background cos I'm like "lol fuck it, I'll ask forgiveness later".

so experiment = shut down permanently! lol

(to be clear, nobody gave a shit, but....I didn't like doing it)

So the "meet the team" thing I mentioned upthread is happening — beginning of next month, I'm being flown to Boise, Idaho. I'm gonna have to spend two entire days in transit (there are no direct flights from where I live, so I have to do multi-hour layovers in Seattle going there and coming back) in order to spend one day in between in the office, attending meetings, being taken to lunch, and whatever. It seems completely absurd to me, but clearly it's not my decision.

Make sure to bring us back some potatoes

I'm more likely to come back with a bag full of LDS and white power (but I repeat myself) literature.

Ha, I could probably be in our San Francisco office in a half-hour, but I can't be bothered

how long would it take you to get home from that office, Andy, though, that's the real question!

the real advantage of WFH is the lunchtime nap. Don't get me wrong, we used to take those when we worked at the office too but most people did it in their cars. I found a little nook with a couch and a view in the building's gym. Nothing beats yr own bed though.

^^^

That is truly the one thing I miss. I did WFH yesterday. Napped twice.

So depressing to still watch WFH getting stripped away. I still get one day a week, but it's constantly held over our heads as a treat that will be taken away at any moment.

The company my wife works for was all "remote work is great, we want you to be happy and remote work is the future" in 2021, but have since done a 180.

It was a slow rolling, "hey it would be nice to see some of you in the office once a week" > "actually you must be in the office once a week" > "did we say once? we meant twice" > "it would be great if you could be here 3-4 days per week" > "actually, now we require you to be in the office 4 days a week" to current rumblings of mandatory in person full-time coming soon.

Amazingly, somehow they just haven't connected the hemorrhaging of employees and open positions to that whole train.

I'm still WFH 100%. but my company downsized their office during the first lockdown (before I started working there) and now the office is constantly full, there's only enough room for half the employees if that. I'm happy to go in if there's a reason, which there probably will be soon, as we are going to build a new system that's going to require a lot of discussions that would be easier in person, but apart from that I can't be arsed.

My current employer doesn't even have an office. When I started talking to them about work, I kept offering to come in if necessary. They kept saying "no, no need," until finally they told me they don't have an office.

It's possible that at some point this will bite me in the butt but for now I am just going to roll with it.